STF busts RRB online exam racket, 6 held

THE ACCUSED USED TO PROVIDE SOLVERS TO CANDIDATES IN RETURN OF HEFTY AMOUNTS.

ALLAHABAD: The special task force (STF) busted a Railway Recruitment Board (RRB) online examination racket and arrested six persons late Friday night. Those arrested included a railways senior section engineer Vinod Prakash Gupta, the mastermind of the racket.

The accused used to provide solvers to candidates in return of hefty amounts.

The STF team also recovered Rs 9.66 lakh, laptops and half-a-dozen mobile phones from the accused. According to police, the fraud has been going on since the start of the online examinations some years back. The examinations were being conducted over the Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) platform for different posts in 22 districts, including Allahabad.

The Allahabad STF on Friday received inputs that some persons were providing solvers to candidates appearing for the examination. An STF team immediately raided a building in Jondhwal area of Shivkuti and arrested six.

At the time of the raid the solvers were linked up to computers at RRB examination centres -- Sanyogita Institute of Management Technology in Teliyarganj, First Step E-Education in Chakia and Mahashay Masuriadeen Intermediate College in Shankarghat area.

STF circle officer Praveen Singh Chauhan said: “There was a nexus between Gupta and some examination centres, invigilators and TCS employees. He was carrying on with his nefarious activity since four years.” Chauhan said the others arrested were Radheyshyam Pandey, owner of Sanyogita Institute in Shivkuti, Rajesh Kumar Panchal, Himanshu Rawat, Shravan Mishra and Shailendra Kumar.

The circle officer said TCS operator Ankur Jha used to help the accused in solving the online question papers while Gupta used to manage the candidates and take Rs 1 to 2 lakh from them in advance. “Gupta took the remaining Rs 8 lakh after the candidates were declared successful in the examination. Two employees of United Engineering College -Vijay Shukla and Yashwant Singh – also used to manage candidates and solvers for the examinations,” Chauhan said. While Shukla and Singh, besides four others, were on the run, several other examination centres were under the STF scanner, he said.

RRB chairman NP Sinha, meanwhile, admitted to some anomalies in the online examination. However, he said anything concrete could be said only after matching the leaked question papers with the original ones. A technical team was investigating the incident, he added.